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November 9, 2009

New Moon Quilt: It will be as if I'd never existed.

As if I'd Never Existed by Iris

"It will be as if I'd never existed."Those were the words that stopped my heart cold and sent me into a two week depression the first time I encountered them. I was in such denial for most of New Moon (the whole day it took to read), seriously thought it would only be a day or two then he would be back....a part of me is still shocked each time I read New Moon.

This was not originally my block to complete, nor was it my original idea to use the elements I used, but I'm happy with the results and tried to put my own touches on it.I Started with the Silver Linings pattern shown here. The skill level is "challenging". Well, that it is! Especially since I didn't follow it exactly because I wanted to show that progression of time from when Edward leaves to when Sam finds Bella. The pattern itself, 10" x 16", came printed on velum. There are 8 subsections that need to be completed first, then each regular section A thru U. Planning ahead was challenging, with those subsections, trying to figure out where to place the lighter grays/greens, then where to start the medium tones, to finally end with a section of blacks.

For the left half, I took a picture of Bella's house used in the movie, printed it out roughly the size that would fit on that space, then just drew the lines directly on the printout.Miraculously it ended up dividing nicely, with standard sized pieces (no weird eighth's to contend with). I was really happy to find a few fabrics in my stash that I thought were perfect for her house, the green with stars for the stairs and gray with lines and stars for the downstairs curtains (I think of depicting Charlie with stars, for obvious reasons), the roof tile fabric, and the white on cream fabric that I used for the "yellowed lace" curtains of Bella's room. At first I made her house section with just the gray sky but side by side it didn't meld well together, so I took scraps left over from the woods and just fudged on some more trees/leaves bracketing the house. Then I tried to make the ground under the house match up the woods part.

For the wolf I took this aqua wolf magnet that my neighbor (closet Twifan) had brought me from New Mexico and just traced it on solid black fabric. I don't care for the magnet itself, but it sure came in handy for this project! For Bella's truck I printed out the picture from Stephenie Meyer's website (inverted), stuck it on the back of the Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 (my adhesive of choice as you all know) and just cut the pieces out. I was in such a hurry when zig-zag stitching the appliques by machine that I forgot to use stabilizer. But it only puckered up the wolf section slightly, which was a section with lots of seams from the piecing. I also lost the "perfect" headlight buttons I pulled out from my stash two seconds after I'd pulled them out (not an uncommon occurrence for me!), spent a frantic couple minutes looking for them but had to finally put on other buttons or else I wouldn't make it to UPS on time.For the quote I was concerned about two things, stiffness of printable fabric and not being able to print white/cream letters on an inkjet. My solutions, I used printable silk charmeuse sheet instead of cotton sheet, and I actually scanned my background, typed the text in white over the scanned photo, and printed that on the off white charmeuse. Then I suffered a moment of panic when I thought to help "set it" with bubblejet rinse, and all the ink started to run off! I quickly took it out of that solution and soaked it in Retayne for 20 min instead.

This was definitely the hardest design I've ever had to sew. And to do it in a very short time. And it was the hardest one to give up!

2 comments:

Iris, absolutely amazing job! I love the fabrics, the overall effect, every special detail, everything! Excellent work; it makes this quilt priceless! Charlie/Bella's house is adorable! you did a great job!

Thanks for a great description of all it took to create your block.You were so creative with a design that wasn't your own to start with and found great solutions to the challenging work!Maybe one day I will create my own Twilight Quilt after my Harry Potter quilt that is in the PIGs pile!

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